Cowboy Builder Nightmares - laying tiles

What could be worse than starting your tiling job, and you make an enormous schoolboy error, as you realise that you have glued some of the tiles on back to front?

Actually, it could be worse than that, you could have paid a skilled professional builder or tiler to do the job, and upon inspection of the completed job, it becomes evident that you may have employed a cowboy builder.

 We would ALWAYS advise on going with a tiler or builder that is part of a trade association, such as The Federation of Master Builders, The Guild of Master Craftsmen or the Tile Association as a good start, but you cant beat a personal recommendation.

 

Ask your friends or neighbours first, I'm betting somebody that you know has had experience in hiring a professional to fit the slate tiles in their kitchen.

Whatever you do, try not to just go with the cheapest fitting quote possible, just take a look below at the kind of things that could happen, it really pays to do a bit of research first.

The number one way for a bad tiler to cut corners and keep his materials costs down is to use the bare minimum of tile adhesive.

The most common method is for him to put a blob of adhesive under the corner of each tile (a hugh faux pas by our standards!), and therefore the middle of each tile would have an empty void underneath, and would be completely un-supported.

After a very short time, it is an inevitable fate that the floor tiles will crack right down the middle from the pressure of being walked upon. This is extremely frustrating for the home owner, as it may be weeks or months before anything happens, by which time the tiler would have cashed his pay cheque and be long gone.

The slate tiles in the picture above are very badly stained with grout. We would always advise using a stone sealer on the tiles before grouting them.

Natural stone tiles have a certain degree of porisity, and a fine grout would easily get trapped in the surface texture of the stone. If this is left to dry, the grout residue would be an absolute nightmare to scrub off.

We recently heard a story about a tiler that fitted some slate tiles in a kitchen, and applied the grout without having sealed the tiles first. This could have been quite easily fixed at this point, but once the grout had dried he forgot to wipe the tiles thoroughly and then applied the sealer. This meant that he had actually sealed the grout residue into the surface of the slate tiles. I can only assume that he must have been rushing the job so he could get home early, saying that this was a complete mess is an understatment!

Upon hearing this, I really found it difficult to believe that this tiler hadn't just fallen out of a banana tree! Needless to say, a lot of the tiles had to be replaced. Fortunately in this case, the tiler did pay for the damages.

Posted in: cracked tiles,find a good tiler,grout residue,seal tiles before grouting,slate tiles,the tilers association